Ian's favorite joke of the moment.

um

via Jesus Needs New PR.

I burned the no-bake cookies.

Here's the recipe from yesterday. You've had these. I'm pretty sure.

Take a large saucepan. Put in 1/4 cup milk, 1 cup sugar, 1 and a half Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa, 2 Tablespoons peanut butter (supercrunchy if you have it) and a half a stick of butter.

It works better if the butter isn't frozen.*

Stir that mess together and place over medium heat. Bring to a boil.

Boil for 90 seconds without stirring.

Remove from heat. Stir in 1 and a half cups rolled oats (old-fashioned oatmeal, your box may say. The stuff you use for cookies. The stuff you cook on the stove top for 5 minutes. That oatmeal.) and a swig of vanilla extract.

Drop by spoonfuls (or whatever sort of lumpy shape you like) onto a piece of foil. (I didn't use a cookie sheet, just laid the foil on the counter.)

Don't eat these until they cool.

Right.

The next time I make these, I will add some salt, since, in my opinion, all cookies need salt. And use even chunkier peanut butter, because the peanut pieces are nice.

* Frozen butter does not encourage even heating of all the ingredients in the fudgey stage. If you're not careful, you could even burn some of it.

And then all your Facebook friends will say you are awesome.

Is it me? Really? Seriously, you can tell me. It's me, isn't it?

So I finally made some of this freakin' No Knead Bread that the entire bake-o-sphere has been on about for a year.

The backstory: Mark Bittman, my #1 favorite in the pantheon of favorite food writers, wrote about this idea in his column for the NYTimes Wednesday food section last November. Read it here. I must admit, I scoffed. That cannot work, I said.

But a whole lot of people got excited about this recipe, and this technique (if, in fact, leaving something in the fridge for a couple of days could be called a technique.) (And, as I consider my love of brined poultry, I guess it can.) Really, it has been the talk of the food-blogosphere.

I was looking something up on Jaden's Steamy Kitchen, which I love, and saw that she was pimping a technique that she said was even easier and resulted in a loaf that was even tastier - from a cookbook called Artisan Bread in 5 Min a Day. Seriously, who could resist that?

So on Saturday I whipped up a bowl of this dough. And tonight I baked some off. The third loaf is in the oven right now for another couple of minutes. We've eaten one small loaf - I had planned to have it with dinner, but it didn't get done in time, so now it's not dinner, it's just an experiment.

Here are the things I think I did wrong:
I may not have used enough salt.
I think I may have played with the dough too much.
I definately didn't give those first two loaves enough time to proof today between fridge and oven.

It was never spectacularly wet and sticky like the dough Bittman talks about - after just a little while on the counter, it was more springy and earloby, like regular bread dough after some turns in the KitchenAide.

The result:
The crust is really excellent. No complaints there. (The bread I bake normally is famous for its crust, but the famous crust is the product of a fairly fiddly process involving ice water, a pump-spray bottle, and way too many oven-door-openings for a house with a toddler in it. This is definately the best crust I have ever had without the insane fiddling.)

The crumb (the soft inside part) is soft, medium dense, uniform rather than bubbley or interestingly textured. I was disappointed in this, especially after seeing the gorgeous photos like this one:
from Steamy Kitchen.

She also raves about the flavor, and this is where the evidence lies that I have gone wrong somewhere. The flavor of my loaves is decent, but it's not great.

On the scale of bread flavor (0 being a white hoagie roll at Subway, decidedly far worse than Wonderbread, and 10 being Peter Rinhart's Brother Juniper slow-rise French Bread made at home - dude, this was a 4. That's me, being charitable. A charitable 4.

Ideas for next time:
I could always try FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS.
I could go with the Bittman/Sullivan Street recipe (which has no sugar)(which is where I think the flavor problem may lie.)

I have to say, though - I was wrong. This really is easy and fast, and it really does result in a loaf of bread with some seriously good characteristics.

Figures that I would start experimenting with this at the END of winter, doesn't it? You'll be able to spot our house this summer. It'll be the one that runs the air conditioning all day and night, with the tip jar on the porch.

And it'll smell awesome.

and of course I am watching American Idol

is it just me, or does this year's top 30 have an extra-large portion of boys who sing
like women?


Okay, that's not very nice, and not a very progressive feminist or Christian thing to say.

It's also not actually what I meant.

What I actually meant was - LOOK like women. An extra-large portion of boys who LOOK like women.

Inconcievable!

And, unbeliveably,again! This one's just audio - I was moving around a lot, the video might have gotten messed up. The file's actually a Mitchell-Henning portmanteau - the first half is Zach Sandberg interviewing Moses via sattellite (played by Eric, on video), and then the second half is my 'sermon', which involved tying people together with pink yarn (Manos de Uruguay, for any of you who are yarn fanciers. Second service I used rainbow-colored Sugar and Cream crafters cotton. It went faster, and I collected the ridiculous tangle at the end and draped it over the base of the cross.)

Updated to add: Video! same link.

what's this?

Or Why My Car Smells Great Today But Will Smell Totally Gross By Sunday.

If you were to look closely, you might be able to discern a maraschino cherry wedged into my passenger side seatbelt socket.

See, I was buying some stuff at Target. And the Target in my little town in near the Chik-Fil-A. Wanting to squeeze every second of freedom and alone time out of this childless errand, but at the same time wanting to be kind to The World's Best Husband, I decided to stop and get us milkshakes.

The drive-through was crazy; being childless, I could blithely PARK MY CAR! and LEAVE IT! And WALK INTO A PLACE. By myself. So I did. I got two - chocolate for him, Cookies and Cream for me, complete with tons of whipped cream and a cherry. (I think I may like the whipped cream better than the milkshake. When I was pregnant, and being accomodated by everyone on the earth, I regularly ate the whipped cream - all of it - off other people's desserts and Starbucks'. I didn't eat dessert myself - just everyone's whipped cream. What an ass.) Anyway, the nice people at Chik-Fil-A tucked my shakes into the 2-shake carrier, which I nestled into the seat (they're too big for my cup holders) and drove home.

I made it almost all the way. But when I tool the left at Pilgrim's Landing a little too quickly, the holder tumbled, and the chocolate shake lost its dome top, leaving a little dune of whipped cream across my seat.

My thoughts at this point, all within a split-second:
1. Fuck.
2. Well, most of his shake is still in there. It's just the whipped cream.
3. Mine tipped over but seems mostly intact.
4. mmmmmm, whipped cream...

and without thinking, I reached down and scooped up a portion of the spill with my cupped hand. Yes, and smeared it into my mouth. Look, I'm not PROUD of this, I'm just telling you what happened.

And while it happened, my attention was momentarily diverted (mmmmm) and I drifted into the other lane.

Nothing happened - I didn't hit anything.

But, figuring that I really should be in my own lane, I jerked the wheel quite suddenly.

And that's when my shake fell over a second time and dumped out between the seats. And across my shirt and shorts. I already has some on my NECK from the whipped cream-scooping a moment before.

And then I was home.

I wiped up the seats and floormats with the paper towels that I keep in my car (it will surprise no one to hear that this is not the first spill in the front seat, though it may be the most extensive.) I walked into the house, sheepishly handed Eric his two-thirds of a milkshake, and continued up to the shower without a word.

Anyway, the Prius smells frickin' awesome, but a couple more hundred-degree days will sour the upholstery.

At least, that's what happened after the Latte Incident.